The Satanic Panic

True Crime Conversations · Oct 6, 2021 · 33m

In 1983, in Manhattan Beach, California, one woman named Judy Johnson put forward an allegation. Her two-and-a-half-year-old son was, at the time, attending McMartin preschool. Johnson claimed that her son had been sexually abused by a teacher at the school named Ray Buckley. Her claims were unlike anything police had heard before. Although there was no evidence of abuse taking place, police decided to send a form letter to about 200 parents of students at the pre-school. It asked them to speak to their children and listed off possible abuse they might have experienced. Over the next seven…